


The Illimitable Sky

by istia



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Adventure, M/M, POV John Sheppard, Time Travel, Whimsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-05
Updated: 2011-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:20:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and his team's simple journey to the SGC turns into an unexpectedly odd mission as their trip through the stargate is mysteriously diverted to 1954 England, where they try to ameliorate an historical wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Illimitable Sky

Rodney, as usual, was babbling about something inconsequential--to everyone but Rodney--as John stepped into the wormhole at the Midway Station on their way to Earth. Rodney was in mid-sentence when John stepped out the other side not onto the familiar SGC metal platform, but onto green grass on a slight slope that made him stumble. Instantly drawing his pistol, he went into a crouch and pivoted around, aware of Teyla and Ronon flanking him in similar positions and Rodney, silent now, behind him.

A wide, empty, grass field surrounded them on three sides, slanting sunlight making patches of dew shine like quicksilver. At their backs and beyond the field in front were woods, but they seemed as empty as the field. John slowly straightened, but didn't loosen the grip on his .45 ACP.

"What the hell, Rodney! Where are we?"

"How should I know?"

Rodney was frantically stabbing a finger at the souped-up scanner he took on all their missions. This trip wasn't a mission, but trust Rodney not to leave home without all his essential toys. Thank Christ for paranoid, anal physicists.

"This land doesn't appear to resemble the area near the SGC," Teyla observed, head tilted as she scanned the woods at their backs.

"Not like Canada, either." Ronon was holding his gun two-handed, eyes as alert as Teyla's.

Even bent over his scanner and preoccupied, Rodney snorted. "You haven't seen Canada, just Vancouver. There's a lot more of it than just one city, you know."

"And just which part of Canada are we in, then?" John didn't bother trying to keep the testiness from his voice. It was just supposed to be a simple trip from Midway to the SGC, for Christ's sake. "Are we even on Earth?"

Rodney sighed out a long breath that sounded like half-relief, half-frustration. "Earth, yes. At least, fairly certainly Earth: gravity; relative proportions of gases in the atmosphere; magnetic north all fit the parameters. I can't detect any weird elements in the mineral and organic compounds around us, and nothing significant is missing."

"Except the stargate. For one slightly significant thing."

They all turned to look at the two large rocks they'd stepped out from between.

"Huh. Standing stones." Rodney put his scanner to work, but shook his head, frowning. "I can't find any trace of Ancient tech or a recent energy surge. They just seem to be...rocks."

John reached a hand cautiously between them, but felt nothing but air.

"What are standing stones?"

John glanced at Ronon, who looked as on edge as John felt. "Just a name for rock circles people made a long time ago by putting big rocks in the ground so they're upright."

_A long time ago._

He shared a startled look with Rodney, who bent over his scanner again while John looked at the emptiness of the land around them, feeling foreboding. He'd just noticed the faint but reassuring sign of a fence on the far edge of the field to his left when Rodney spoke.

"Okay, no, there are elements in the atmosphere consistent with industrialized society, so we haven't been sent back centuries."

"Well, that's good to know. But this still isn't the SGC or even, as Teyla noted, Colorado. So where are we and why the hell are we here?"

"I have no idea! I was with you!"

John held up a hand. "Sorry." He managed not to match Rodney's pissy tone, but it wasn't the most sincere apology he'd ever made. Blaming Rodney was unfair; he knew that, but he needed answers, dammit, and they had to come from Rodney.

"We don't appear to be in any danger, at least." Teyla didn't holster her gun, but she did relax her stance, feet set apart and ready, eyes alert and constantly roaming.

"Yeah." He took a breath and forced relaxation into his own aching hand wrapped around his gun. He wiped the palm of his other hand surreptitiously on his BDU's. "You know, what with the standing stones and all, this place looks a lot like--"

"England, yes, or the UK, at least. No--" Rodney glanced up at last from the scanner and took a long look around "--England, judging by our distance from magnetic north." His voice slowed and he met John's eyes in a meaningful look. "On a warm, sunny morning...."

It was November at the SGC they'd been heading for.

Rodney pulled the laptop off his back with the familiar tearing sound of Velcro giving way. "Give me a minute to check something." He looked around, then sighed and gestured imperiously at John.

John feigned misunderstanding on automatic reflex, but gave up the act immediately because, hell, they really needed to find out where they were. He shrugged out of his leather jacket and laid it on the damp grass. Rodney put the laptop on it and went to his knees, hunching over it within the circle the three of them made around his vulnerable back. After a moment, he looked up.

"I can't find any kind of network to log into, even a secured one. That might be because we're miles away from anything--or as miles away as you can get in England--but there's something odd..."

He scrabbled for his scanner again, punched a finger at it several times, then looked up, pale face even paler than usual. "I can't find any sign of satellite activity."

John shook away the icy chill that walked up his spine. He stared down into Rodney's wide eyes. "We can't have--"

"I think maybe--"

"Jesus, McKay!"

"What?" Ronon demanded in the angry voice he got when he felt out of his depth.

"We're on Earth." Rodney spoke in a harried voice. "But I can't detect any signs of twenty-first century technology." He looked straight up at Ronon. "Technology consistent with our time."

"Our...time." Teyla gave the appearance of being calmer than any of the rest of them, but there was a steely note in her voice.

John couldn't believe it either. "So you think we somehow or other got diverted from Colorado to England, and from our time to...some previous time."

"Yes?" Rodney tapped at the laptop a bit more, then shook his head and shut it down. He got up and busied his hands stuffing it back into the carrier he used, but John could see the slight shake in them. "I've found out all I can with the scanner. We're going to have to physically go and find out where and when we are."

"And we got here," John said, pulling on his jacket and feeling like a bulldog that wouldn't let go of a chew toy, but unable to stop himself, "without an apparent gate and with no Ancient technology anywhere in the vicinity."

"As far as I can tell--" Rodney's testy voice broke off and his expressive face turned stricken. "Oh, my god." He thrust a hand into his jacket pocket.

"What?"

Rodney balanced a small ovoid object on his hand for them to see. It had the smooth, seamless curves and the metallic sheen of Ancient work. It looked harmless, and John felt nothing from it.

"What is it?" Ronon pulled his eyes from the woods behind them long enough to glance at it.

"I don't know. We couldn't find out anything about it, not in the database and not in our experiments. It seems dead. I mean, it doesn't _do_ anything, that we can tell."

"That you can tell."

"Yeah." Rodney's face was chagrined as he met John's gaze.

"So why are you carrying it with you on our visit to the SGC?" Teyla had also glanced at it before returning to scan the sloping field and the woods in front of them.

Rodney waved a hand in a limp gesture. "I just-- I mean, it didn't seem to do anything and I just like...the feel of it."

"The feel of it."

"Will you stop echoing everything I say?" Rodney snapped at him. "It feels nice to handle, okay; kind of like a big worry bead."

John stared at him, biting back his need to repeat the words in a suitably incredulous tone: _A big worry bead._ Instead, he spoke in what he was sure was a perfectly even voice.

"It's Ancient tech, Rodney, and you have the ATA gene."

Rodney twitched and his hand closed over the harmless looking thing. He hastily relaxed his fingers again and stared down at it dolefully. "I know. God. But I don't see how it could divert the wormhole and send us somewhere completely unplanned in time and space! There's not even any kind of power source to it. At least--" he looked up dejectedly "--none we were able to detect. If there is actually a power source in it strong enough to divert the wormhole, it must be an amazing piece of miniaturization." He looked back down at the object with a familiar distracted look on his face.

John snapped his fingers to get his attention. "McKay! Not the point right now. You can figure out how it works later. Right now, we need to use it to get home."

"I don't know how! How many times do I have to say it? I don't know how it works; I didn't even know it _had_ a working function!"

"What is that marking on its back?"

John focused his gaze at Teyla's words. The sphere had turned in Rodney's hand, revealing a groove along one side; otherwise, it was entirely featureless. Rodney's thumb hovered over the groove, but he didn't touch it.

"It's a slide, but none of our tests on it showed any response."

"Well, maybe that's because you didn't test it while going through a stargate!"

"I know! Jesus, I'm _sorry_ , all right? I don't know how it happened and I don't know how to reverse it. It was just an inert lump in all our tests."

John took a deep breath. "Okay. How about you move the slider in the opposite direction and we'll step through the standing stones."

Rodney rolled his eyes, but gathered his things and they walked between the stones as he held the sphere. They turned and walked back through the stones as John held the sphere and clicked the slider to the other end as he breasted the stones, then again as he moved it the other way.

"It appears to be an inert lump again," Teyla said in a cool voice.

Rodney's shoulders hunched, and he made a mute, helpless gesture in the air.

"There has to be a way to make it work." The damned sphere nestled in John's hand with a comforting, silken feel. He stared at the small slide, only an inch long and with apparently only two settings, moving with a click from one end to the other. "This has to be On and Off," he muttered. "But which is which?"

"Well, why don't you try it in each position while clicking your heels and saying, 'There's no place like home'?"

John left out the heel clicking, but tried applying mental force as he--and the others, including a complaining Rodney--stepped back and forth through the standing stones with the switch set to one end, then the other, and back and forth again as he tried first getting them to the SGC gate, then to Atlantis on a wild hope.

"It's useless." Ronon's voice made it plain he was done with walking between rocks.

"Yeah," Rodney said dejectedly, "that's what we decided."

John put the heels of both hands to his eyes and rested in the darkness for a moment to ground himself. When he dropped his hands, he looked at his teammates.

"Okay, first up, we need to find out where and when we are. I don't think we're going to be in any danger here--" he ignored Ronon's raised eyebrow and pointed look around the empty countryside "--but let's treat it like any other mission into unknown territory until we know what we're up against. Let's be on our guard, guys."

"At least the natives aren't likely to shoot us in the ass with an arrow at first sight," Rodney muttered. He frowned and looked at each of them, then down at his scanner. "Though, depending on what era this is, we might look wildly out of place."

"You said the world's reached an industrial age, right?"

"Yes, but in England, that could fall anywhere in at least the past 200 years. We're not going to blend in if this is the Victorian age, or even earlier."

"All right, so we use stealth, try to avoid contacting any natives before we figure out the situation."

Ronon did a quick scout of the woods behind them and reported no signs of any trails and that they seemed to extend a good distance.

Rodney shrugged. "England's a small country, but it still has some large tracts of woodland today. Who knows what it was like in whatever period this is. Just our luck if we've landed on the edge of one."

"The fence seems the logical guide to follow." Teyla's calm voice made it plain she'd had enough of standing around.

They went down the field, keeping the distant fence to their left in sight and angling toward it until they entered the copse of trees at the foot of the slope. Not far inside was a wide, hard-packed dirt path, which they followed in the direction of the fence. Trees surrounded them on both sides, too thick to see through on their right, mostly birches and larches that met overhead and offered little undergrowth. Birds chirped in the branches as they walked through patches of dappled sunlight filtered through the leaves.

John's tension ratcheted up with each step he took through the seductively peaceful beauty. He forced himself to leave his gun holstered, where he'd put it while examining the sphere. Rodney was convinced this was England, which meant a relatively small chance of threat, but he couldn't shake the feeling of being on an alien, unknown planet. Even knowing it was ridiculous, he felt naked without his P-90, left behind on their simple trip to the SGC.

Rodney stopped suddenly, staring down at the scanner as he'd been doing all along. "Hold it. Somebody's coming. Fast!"

They dived into the woods on either side, taking cover behind trees. John checked on Rodney, who was crouched down behind a clump of ferns at the base of a birch, then looked across the path, smiling when he couldn't see a trace of Teyla or Ronon. A noise of...galloping?...grew quickly in volume, then a rider on horseback swept into view. It was a woman with fair hair bouncing below a velvet helmet, wearing jodhpurs and a beige shirt and sitting atop a sleek looking chestnut gelding. She was past them in a few seconds, out of sight around a curve in the path, the hoofbeats fading.

"A bridle path." Rodney joined them on the path, after checking the scanner and giving John the all-clear. "Did you notice her clothes? Didn't women ride sidesaddle in the Victorian Age?"

John squinched his eyebrows in thought. "Country women? Weren't women outside the cities freer in their dress choices?"

Rodney looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "How would I know? I'm not a squishy scientist."

"Yeah." He shrugged at Teyla and Ronon. "Unfortunately, neither of us is much up on history, at least not English history. Um, other than military history."

Rodney snorted. "Of course."

Oh, like he could let that dig pass! "And the entire biographies and cultural histories of every prominent scientist through the ages. Of _course_."

Rodney chuckled. "Yeah, if only this were Newton's time, I might have actually useful input."

Teyla and Ronon walked on, with Ronon saying, "She didn't have any weapons at all, not even a slingshot or bow."

Teyla nodded. "She did not appear to pose a significant threat of any kind, though the animal might pose a certain amount of danger either from training or inadvertently."

That elicited a squawk from Rodney, and John suddenly thought it might be prudent to fill them in on the types of weapons they might see--but that they were most likely not to see any among ordinary citizens. Also, that horses in this era, _whatever_ era in England it was post-Industrial Revolution, weren't trained for combat.

"Horses might be their principal means of transportation." Rodney turned to John. "Though I got a distinct twentieth-century vibe from her. Maybe it was the hair hanging free? Didn't women put it up in Victoria's day?"

John rolled his eyes as Ronon turned to ask, "Who is this Victoria you keep talking about?"

"She was queen of this country for a long time. Ruled it." Rodney waved his scanner about. "Sort of."

"And a whole lot of the rest of the world," John added. "Not that that matters to us."

They reached the fence, which ended at the path, separating two indistinguishable fields.

"I think that one's in clover?" Rodney squinted at the one to their right.

"No, it's just got some clover growing in the grass."

"Isn't that splitting hairs?"

Teyla's voice cut between them. "Is this matter of clover of concern to our situation?"

"Uh, no. Sorry." John followed her and Ronon down the path, seeing Rodney's chastened look in his peripheral vision.

The woods ended a short distance farther at a road. Single lane, hard surface, winding between tall hedges on either side that blocked all view of the areas beyond.

"There's no cover at all." Ronon frowned as he looked up and down the empty road.

"I've got movement. That way, not far." Rodney pointed to the left. "Looks like a single person. Maybe an isolated house? A worker in a field?"

John sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Okay. I'll go, you guys wait here." He unbuckled his holster and handed it to Ronon, who gave him a worried frown.

"You're going unarmed?"

"I really don't want to shoot any nice English folks. Especially since we've apparently _traveled in time_ \--" he shot an acid look at Rodney, who flailed a hand half-heartedly "--and there's the grandfather paradox to consider."

Ronon tilted his head. "Grandfather--?"

"You explain it to them. I'll be back soon."

He walked quickly across the road and trotted along it as close to the hedge as he could get. His leather jacket and black T-shirt should fit in okay, but he wasn't sure his BDU's would pass more than a brief glance. Of course, he really didn't have the first fucking idea of what they were up against, which was the entire problem.

Right around the bend in the road was an opening in the hedge with a farmhouse set a couple of hundred yards in. He couldn't see any movement, so he ran to the shelter of an outbuilding, where he paused at seeing a line of washing beside the house. He sprinted across the yard at an angle to the cover of a larger building, possibly a barn from the smell, and edged around it to survey the washing. Clothing mingled with sheets and towels. He ducked back as a side door in the house opened and a woman came out carrying a metal bucket. She walked around the side of the house opposite to the washing, and he could hear her calling, "Sooey, sooey, sooey," as she disappeared from view.

He ran to the washing lines and grabbed a couple pairs of pants and a flowered dress; as he ran past the barn, he spotted a coat hanging inside and plunged in to grab it and a brimmed straw hat before racing for the road.

He made it back to the others, panting but triumphant as he dumped the clothes at their feet. As he caught his breath, he threw a pair of the pants at Rodney and handed the dress to Teyla. She held it dubiously.

"Sorry, big guy, no pants in your size, but this coat might fit and if you can stick your hair up inside the hat, it'll help."

"Help what?" Rodney was holding the pants at arms' length.

"I got them from a clothesline, Rodney: they're clean. Put them on. I'm not sure BDU's were the fashion back...now. Drawing attention to ourselves will just make things all that harder."

Teyla went into the woods to change and came back still looking dubious. Also, looking like the star of a 1940's film. John gaped at her alongside an equally frozen Ronon and Rodney--until he noticed her flinty eyes and hastily busied himself with his own makeover while Rodney cleared his throat and turned away.

"You look good," Ronon chuckled. "Weird, but good."

Teyla pursed her lips. "The material is very pretty and feels pleasant, but it's extremely bright and loud for camouflage." She eyed John.

"Trust me, you'll fit right in." He frowned. "Well, I think you will. That's the kind of thing girls, I mean women, wore in movies, you know."

Rodney beamed. "Definitely not Victorian era! Or Edwardian! Almost modern, even."

"Yeah, if you were born in the 1920's."

"Better the 1920's than the 1860's."

John conceded the point as he checked them over. His borrowed pants didn't fit around the waist, but he removed the holster from his belt and threaded the belt through the tabs. Rodney's pair of pants, probably owned by the same man, fit him well enough that he could walk with only an occasional tug to keep them in place, and they were long enough that the bottoms, with narrow cuffs, covered the tops of his black runners. Ronon stuffed his hair up into the hat and jammed it on his head; it gave him an alarmingly country bumpkin look, but the brim shaded his face--and his scowl--and it was probably an improvement over his dreads in this time and place. Probably. Unfortunately, the coat didn't fit him, so John handed it off to Rodney, who exchanged it with a grumble for his uniform jacket, and they were left with Ronon's leather pants and homespun Athosian shirt, plus Teyla's military-issue boots, which looked incongruous with the knee-length floral dress.

Ronon twitched under their triple gaze.

"What? I can't go naked."

John sighed. "Just try to stand behind us if we meet anyone, okay? And keep your gun hidden!"

Ronon shrugged. They hid their clothes in the woods and their guns in pockets; Teyla put her pistol into a bag Rodney unearthed from his laptop case, which he refused to leave behind. John agreed, twitchy at the thought of anyone finding it in this time. They moved at a rapid pace down the road, dashing past the opening to the farmhouse in a crouch.

"I feel badly having stolen that poor woman's clothes." Teyla ran a hand down the silk dress in a gesture John was pretty sure was unconscious.

"We'll return them on our way back, if we get a chance," he promised.

They worked their way quickly down the road, which left the hedges behind and widened into two lanes about a mile along. Warned by Rodney's scanner, they were expecting the village they came to, and paused in the shade of a large oak tree set in a small, manicured lawn to survey the collection of stone buildings, including a cobblestone main street. John spotted a shop with an open door and a newspaper displayed outside.

"I'll be right back," he murmured.

He slipped away from the tree's shelter and walked across the road to the narrow sidewalk. The shop was a newsagent's; he paused, hands in pockets, to look down at the displayed front page of the Little Curleton Herald. Then he took a brisk walk up the rest of the short street, glanced both ways along the cross road, and walked back down the other side to his team.

"Well?" Rodney demanded as John slumped against the tree.

"June 7th, 1954. We're in a place called Little Curleton, wherever that is."

"1954." Rodney frowned. "That explains the lack of satellites. Well, at least there's no war here to worry about right now. But why 1954?"

John shrugged. "Why any year in specific? Why England, for that matter?"

"Yeah, why were we diverted at all?"

"I've already said I don't know!" Rodney shared an exasperated look between John and Ronon.

"I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out and get us home, Rodney," Teyla said in the voice that always smoothed Rodney's rumpled feathers, and he subsided with a weak smile, looking back down at the scanner he was shielding with his hands.

"Eventually." Ronon stuck a finger under the hat and scratched. "Breakfast was hours ago."

Rodney looked up, mouth turned down unhappily. "Yeah, some food would be nice. It might help me think."

Teyla smiled, her eyes still alert on the street. "We certainly can't linger here for long without attracting attention."

John pushed away from the tree. "Right. To get food, we're going to need money. I don't want to risk getting caught stealing more stuff. There's a pawnshop on the upper street. What do we have we can pawn?"

"It's like trade goods," Rodney told Ronon and Teyla. "They give you money for stuff and you can buy it back if you return with money."

Ronon reached up under the hat again, but this time emerged with a shining knife. "Will this do?"

"Nice." John looked it over. No identifying marks that might tip off some future historian it was made off-Earth. Just an elegant, narrow, shining metal knife fashioned by a master craftsman--who happened to live in another galaxy.

Teyla unclasped a necklace and offered it. John hesitated.

"Are you sure? We might not make it back to redeem it."

"It has no sentimental value. I simply saw it in the Junaren market and liked it, so I bought it. I don't wear items I value on missions anymore." She smiled wryly.

It was gold and generic enough in design to pass for Earth work. John took it and slipped it into his pocket.

"Here." Rodney handed him a fountain pen. "Not sure it's worth much, but it's the only thing I have that doesn't reek of a future time. It's not old, but the design of these things hasn't changed in decades, so it should pass okay." He frowned. "You should take Teyla; you're useless at bargaining."

"I am not. Fine. Teyla?"

They walked up the street with Teyla holding his arm as though they were a courting couple. They both studiously ignored the clump of her boots on the sidewalk. They passed a few people who gave them curious but friendly looks, and reached the pawnshop without incident. After a brisk haggling session that left both the pawnshop owner and Teyla looking satisfied, they returned to the tiny park with money weighting down John's pocket and a pair of worn but polished black pumps on Teyla's feet, which looked oddly in style with her white socks, judging by women they saw in passing. From there, the four of them headed for a small cafe opposite the newsagent's.

Rodney made his usual disturbingly graphic pleasure noises while inhaling coffee, but was otherwise unusually silent. He ate a hearty breakfast of fried eggs and fried potatoes with a distracted look, staring out the window when he wasn't looking at his plate. Ronon and Teyla studied the cafe with covert interest, and John sank into a funk of wondering what the hell they were going to do.

They were finishing their meal when Rodney suddenly exclaimed, "Ah-hah! I knew there was something familiar about that date!" Then he looked around with a furtive look and whispered, "Um, tell you later. Are we finished here?"

"Suddenly you're in a rush," John grumbled, but he finished his coffee and stood up to follow Rodney outside.

Rodney contained himself until they'd moved to a wide paved area at the end of the village. They sat on a wooden bench, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.

"I remembered the date. June 7th, 1954! I can't _believe_ this!"

"And this remarkable date is...remarkable why exactly?"

Rodney blinked at him. "Alan Turing. He killed himself on June 7th, 1954."

John stared at him. "Okay." He spoke slowly in his humor-the-mad-natives voice.

Before Ronon could ask, John added, "Alan Turing was a scientist. One of Rodney's horde of historical virtual mentors."

Rodney made an exasperated click of his tongue. "Turing wasn't just a scientist. He was a genius! An incredible, outstanding genius who, among many other accomplishments, played a significant role in the development of the modern computer. Which, hello? The very computers we use to help us travel to other galaxies and do amazing feats!"

He looked around with a dazed look, wonder like a kid's at Christmas shining in his eyes. "And he's alive _right this moment_. Here. Where I am." His voice trailed off in reverent awe.

After a moment's silence, John couldn't resist saying, "Well, not for long, apparently."

Rodney turned an acid look on him. "Which is my _point_ , Sheppard."

John shook his head in confusion as Teyla said, "Your point?"

"We can save him! Don't you see? That must be why we were sent here, on _this_ day! Of all the places and all the days...."

Ronon's eyebrows scrunched together under the hat brim. "We were diverted by somebody or other to save this dead scientist?"

"He's not dead! If I remember correctly--and I absolutely do remember correctly, of course!--he killed, uh, kills himself tonight. We have--" he turned his wrist and pushed up the sleeve of his borrowed coat "--eight, maybe ten, hours to get to him and stop him."

"Rodney, two words: grandfather paradox."

Rodney crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chin up in his most stubborn look. "There is no paradox. He dies tonight. He didn't have kids. He won't have kids even if he lives till he's ninety, as you damned well know."

John flinched, but stayed on track. "Even if it's possible to stop him from killing himself, we can't do it. You know how dangerous that could be, especially since he's a genius capable of making _world-changing_ discoveries and inventions!"

"That only applies if he remained alive _here_."

"What are you talking about?"

"We can take him home with us. Take him away from here. Don't you see? He's going to die tonight, so his time on Earth in this place is over. But he can live out his life in _our_ time, where anything he invents or discovers won't affect the timeline we know. _Nothing in our past will be changed one bit._ The only thing that will change because of his presence is our world from the moment we get back with him, far in his future."

John shook his head. "No. We can't do it. It's too dangerous."

"Sheppard--"

"A large vehicle is approaching," Teyla said.

John looked down the street to a slow-moving bus.

Rodney got to his feet and moved to the edge of the sidewalk, rubbing his hands together. "Oh, good, this must be a bus stop."

"We don't need a bus."

"Yes, we do. We have to get to Manchester as quickly as possible. Buses aren't the quickest means of travel, but since none of us has a driver's license and I don't see a Hertz Rental Car place in this quaint little idyll, anyway, maybe the bus can get us to a train station."

"We're not going to Manchester. We have no fucking reason to go to Manchester."

"I'm going." Rodney spoke in a fierce, low voice. "You do what you want. Just give me my share of the money from my pen."

"No." John pressed his lips together.

The coach lumbered to a stop and the driver opened the door. Rodney stepped to the opening and called, "Hi. We need to get to Manchester. What's the quickest way we can do that?"

An hour later, John, arms crossed, stared mutinously out the window as the bus rattled to a stop outside a ridiculously picturesque, red-and-white train station. Rodney got off with a cheerful wave to the driver and turned to offer Teyla a gallant hand down from the high step. Ronon stood up from his seat across the aisle and thumped John's shoulder.

"Come on, we're here. You can't just sit here sulking."

"I'm not goddamned--" He gave up and followed Ronon's vanishing form off the bus, stepping down into the mild heat of a sunny morning. "Also, that hat makes you look ridiculous, just so you know."

He ignored Ronon's grin and turned to try to corral Rodney, which at the moment was like trying to herd a baby kangaroo. Rodney had already bounced out of sight.

"Where's he got to now?"

"He has gone to inquire about tickets to Manchester." Teyla nodded to the building, which had red and white flowers in hanging baskets to match its paintwork.

"This is nuts. You know that, right?" He looked between them, from Teyla's serene attentiveness to Ronon's curious distraction as he looked around. "We can't go off trying to save some dead scientist who wants to off himself. I mean, very altruistic and all that, but it's _nuts_."

Rodney bounced to his side and handed each of them a ticket. "Here we go. Don't lose them! We're in Kent, apparently, so we'll have to change trains in London, but I got through tickets, so we're set. But they were expensive because it's a fair distance and we can't afford to replace them. Not and eat again."

"Eating again would be good."

Rodney pointed a finger at Ronon and nodded. "Okay, we have an hour's wait, so...make yourselves comfortable."

When they were settled on a damned hard wooden bench on the platform outside the already stuffy waiting room, John made another try at reasoned argument.

"Rodney, _think_ about this. What do you think the IOA will say if we turn up with Alan Fucking Turing in tow?"

Rodney shrugged. "What does it matter? They won't be able to return him to his time, so they'll eventually be sensible and see what an advantage his huge, amazing brain will be to us. Once I've got him up to speed on all the developments of the past fifty years, he'll be such an asset, they'll be pissing themselves with happiness."

John closed his eyes and clunked his head back against the sparkling white clapboard. The basket over his head exuded a heady floral scent and the sky was an absurdly clear blue. He was sitting in a train station in Picture-perfect, England, in fucking 1954 with three strong-willed people who were determined to be _idiots_. He now knew the definition of hell.

He skipped over a repeat of his argument about needing to focus on how they were going to get home. Teyla had proposed that, since this Turing was such a genius, he might be able to help with that problem, an observation that had added herself and Ronon to Rodney's cause and left him with the choice of watching the three of them ride away on the bus or join them. He didn't want to hear it again.

He took a breath and waded back into the fray. He pitched his voice low and throaty, the persuasive voice he knew Rodney wasn't immune to. "Okay, buddy, look, I know this means a lot to you, but how are you even going to persuade a man set on killing himself _tonight_ not to? What kind of argument could appeal to someone in that kind of emotional state?"

Rodney licked his lips as he looked at him, but flicked his fingers. "He's not just a person; he's a scientist. I'll appeal to his scientific curiosity, which should be immense, with his brain."

"You're going to tell him you're from the future? What if he decides after that not to kill himself, but not to come with us, so this world has a living Turing after all, and one with knowledge he absolutely shouldn't have? That could change the world, Rodney!"

Rodney was shaking his head. "Everything important carries a risk. I'll grant you there's a minimal risk your scenario could occur, but it's worth it for the benefits if we can bring him home with us."

"Okay, say you manage to persuade him and we actually find a way to get home. We have no way of knowing whether his disappearance, rather than his death, might lead to a drastic change in our timeline."

Rodney screwed up his nose and stared at him. "What are you talking about? Dies, disappears: what difference could it make to the world? Except to his elderly mother, I suppose, who might live the rest of her life wondering what happened to him. Still, she's going to live the rest of her life with the grief of his death, so I can't see much difference. She apparently convinced herself he didn't kill himself, but _accidentally_ ingested cyanide, so she might successfully rationalize that he's disappeared to a great new life of freedom and just can't contact her because of the authorities." He shrugged.

John gritted his teeth, but tried to keep his impatience in check. "His disappearance rather than his death might make a difference years down the road to someone who might've been inspired by Turing's controversial end to do something world-changing, but might not find the idea of Turing simply having disappeared inspiring in the same way."

It sounded convoluted and far-fetched even to him, so he just pinched the bridge of his nose at the amused skepticism in Rodney's slanted look at him.

"I think we'd've heard if Turing's suicide had inspired someone to achieve some feat of major importance. I'm not aware of anybody like that. Are you?"

John abandoned that approach with a sigh. After a few minutes' silence, filled with birdsong and the scent of the damned flowers, with the sun warming his knees to exactly the right temperature, and everything so goddamned pretty it made his teeth ache, John changed direction.

"You know how cruel this is, right? You're treating him like a commodity, like something you can pick up and use regardless of what he needs or might want."

He felt Rodney go still beside him, and softened his voice.

"He's preparing to kill himself right this moment. He's not you, don't you see? Just because you share big brains doesn't mean Turing will have your intellectual curiosity, that he'll be able to just abandon his mother and all his emotional ties to this world and time to travel to an impossibly distant and alien place to start again. From scratch, fifty years out of date. You don't even know if he'll be able to adapt, if he could learn enough to be productive in the future, or even just content. He's of this time, of this place: you're proposing to rip him away from everything familiar to him, right down to his most basic understanding of the world."

He saw Teyla shift, then settle, on Rodney's other side, and Ronon was a still bulwark at his back. Rodney was also still, staring across the tracks, face set in somber lines. John eased back on the bench, trying not to crowd Rodney now; giving him space to think through the implications.

But Rodney turned serious eyes on him and pitched his voice so low John had to strain to hear and Teyla and Ronon both leaned in. "You know what they did to him, John. You know why he killed himself. How can we possibly be here and not at least try to fix that massive wrong? Are you really going to tell me you can turn away and not give him a choice when this world he's trapped in gave him no fucking choice at all?"

A bee buzzed at the flower basket overhead. John blinked his eyes away from Rodney's to the blue-tinged hills in the distance.

Rodney waved a hand in his peripheral vision, and spoke in the same quiet voice. "This world spread out like a pretty canvas before us fucked him over out of hate. You're right, he might not want to be saved, or he might not have enough left in him to make that effort. Maybe he'll think it'd be kinder on his mother to die rather than disappear. I don't know. I haven't a clue. I just know--" He fell silent for a long moment. "I know he didn't deserve what they did to him any more than you and I would if we were stuck in this place."

A trickle of sweat rolled down John's back as Rodney turned an unwavering gaze on him before continuing in his low, pained voice:

"I'm sorry, but I can't be here, on this day, and not at least offer him the same chance of living a fulfilling life as we have simply because we had the luck to be born a few decades later. And I honestly don't think you can, either, but go ahead and tell me if I've misread you all these years."

He sat still in the silence, the warmth of Rodney's thigh pressed against his own as familiar as Rodney's voice and expressive hands; as known as Rodney's quirks and layers. On his other side, Ronon leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

"What did they do to him?"

Rodney spoke with clipped, quiet venom. "They offered him a choice of jail or drug-induced castration. He chose the drugs. He's lived like that for the last two years."

"I hadn't realized he is a...criminal?"

Rodney turned to Teyla, his leg pressing more closely against John's in his movement. "Yeah, he committed the crime of having sex with another man. When the man robbed him and Turing complained to the police, they arrested him instead for deviant sexual practices. He played a significant role in saving the country during a recent major war, and they treated him like trash." His voice had transmuted into bitter acid.

"Rodney," John murmured.

Rodney took a breath. "Right." He indicated the world spread before them. "Men in this very pretty world aren't allowed to have sex with each other, you see. They can get away with it if they hide it--rather like being part of the US Military in our world--but if they're caught, or reveal their proclivities, they can be locked up. Or chemically castrated so they're incapable of having sex at all."

"Our world isn't a perfect haven, either."

Rodney turned to him. "No, it's not. But for a civilian like Turing in a place like Atlantis? It comes damned closer than he ever had a chance to experience in this time."

Teyla said thoughtfully, "He sounds like a man who deserves a chance," and that was the end of the discussion.

Almost five hours later, they got off the train in Wilmslow, on the outskirts of Manchester. Ronon, who'd been cramped in the small seats on the longest leg of the journey from London, shook himself as he stepped onto the platform, then walked up and down the length of the train with long strides before falling into step with them as they left the station.

"Okay, his house is here somewhere. We'll have to ask directions." Rodney's tension came through in his voice; he'd turned jittery halfway through the trip.

John bumped his shoulder and smiled when Rodney looked at him. Rodney blinked at him, then slowly took a breath and smiled back. "Yeah, okay," he said, and bumped John's shoulder back.

They found Hollymeade after a few false turns. John's stomach was tense as they stood across the road staring at the large, red-brick house.

"Are we doing this, or are we just going to stand here all night?" Ronon shifted impatiently.

"Right." John took a breath and steadied his nerves. He turned to Rodney. "Which side did he live in?"

"Uh, the left. I think." Rodney narrowed his eyes in thought. "Yeah, I'm sure it was the left."

John snorted as they walked up the path to the front steps. "Encyclopedia McKay when it comes to historical geeks."

Teyla laughed and some of the tension flowed away. They could do this; it was a mission like any other. An unexpected, and more or less crazy, one, but a mission nonetheless. And his team was the best at handling unusual situations. Rodney had proposed he go in alone to talk to Turing, but John had vetoed it. They were in an essentially alien culture, and, while it was likely not remotely dangerous, he didn't intend to separate them.

Rodney lifted his hand to knock on the door, but paused, turning to them. He leaned close so they all instinctively leaned in, too, and spoke in a low voice. "Um, don't stare at him, okay? I mean, if there's anything, uh, a bit odd about him."

"Odd like what?"

Rodney glanced at Ronon and grimaced. "The drugs they gave him made him grow, um...." He made a twirly motion in his chest area.

Teyla's eyebrows lifted and Ronon winced, then pulled the straw hat farther down to shadow his face. Rodney lifted the knocker on the door.

Alan Turing was a handsome man. John hadn't been expecting that, for some reason; his mental expectation had been of a weedy guy, fitting some generic nerd image he apparently had in his hindbrain for genius scientists, god knows why considering the genius scientists he knew well (Carter and McKay: hardly generic). He wasn't expecting broad shoulders and fine features, with thick dark hair and perceptive, if weary, eyes.

He studied Turing while Rodney deployed his arsenal of passionate arguments. Turing was engaging with Rodney now, some of the remoteness in his face giving way to burgeoning interest. Rodney had managed to talk his way inside, which still surprised John, and the rest of them had followed.

"I have something to show you, and a story to tell like nothing you've ever imagined," had been Rodney's introductory words to Turing the moment the door opened.

After that gambit, Rodney had pretty much never stopped speaking, both his mouth and hands moving at a frantic pace, but John could tell each new idea Rodney introduced was deliberately chosen to appeal to a man with a brain as curious and wide-ranging as Rodney's own. Turing, not unexpectedly taken aback, had been intrigued despite himself, John was pretty sure, and he'd somehow let Rodney get a foot inside his house, and then down the hall, with the rest of them trailing along. Turing had ended up bringing them to a kind of solarium at the back of the house, a room with three walls of tall windows overlooking a green and flower-rich garden.

And now Turing was fully listening, a small frown line between his eyes as he studied Rodney. Turing was forty-one, only a couple of years older than Rodney and him; John hadn't been expecting that, either. As the blank weariness fell away from Turing like scales and his face grew more animated and he actually _asked questions_ , rather than just passively listening to Rodney's tales of wormholes and other galaxies, of spaceships and gates and a flying city, and the crystal beauty of the mathematics underlying all these accomplishments, Turing straightened and seemed to grow more vital and alive. Less a flat figure from history and more an actual person.

John kept his eyes as much as he could away from the loose shirt Turing wore and the shadows of fleshy contours that occasionally showed when Turing moved without conscious thought, gesturing almost as widely as Rodney as he became more absorbed in the discussion.

By the time Rodney staggered to a stop, breathing like a blown horse, John was as tense with hope Rodney's plan would work as he'd ever been for a mission to succeed. Now he'd met Turing, the thought of this man dying in a few hours--of Turing's being alone in this house, going upstairs to his bedroom and undressing to look a final time at the travesty his body had become before turning away and methodically preparing his only release--was intolerable. He didn't want to think about the fierce light of wonder and intellect in Turing's eyes being extinguished.

Rodney was right: it was insane, but they could fix this, if Turing wanted. They could give him a choice when he hadn't had one before and show him a world of immense possibility.

He felt eyes on him and turned his head from the window to meet Turing's penetrating gaze. He straightened automatically, responding to the quiet, natural authority in Turing's bearing, lodged in his dynamic personality. Rodney stayed quiet as Turing studied John, then turned his head to focus on Teyla and Ronon in turn. They met his eyes with their own level gazes.

"And you all live in a fantastical flying city in the Pegasus Galaxy." His accented voice was calm and uninflected, but his cool smile and tilted head conveyed doubt, and a calculated hint of derision. "Where machines respond to thoughts and people travel between planets via big round rings."

Teyla smiled and bowed her head in acknowledgment of the seeming absurdity. Rodney had given their first names with a vague wave of his hand back at the beginning, but she spoke with the courteous formality of a first meeting: "I am Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tegan, of the planet Athos in the galaxy your people call Pegasus. I have lived my entire life there."

"Hmm." Turing turned to Ronon.

"Specialist Ronon Dex of Sateda. In Pegasus." Ronon pulled off his hat and scratched vigorously at his head as his dreads tumbled down around his shoulders.

Turing's eyes widened a fraction, but otherwise he remained collected. He turned to John, who spread his hands.

"I'm plain Earth human like you and McKay. Born and raised in the US, now a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force. McKay and I were part of the expedition that went to Pegasus and discovered Atlantis, and had the good fortune to meet Teyla and Ronon, along with a lot of other fine folks."

"And all these...aliens, if you'll excuse the word--" he nodded with old-fashioned formality to Teyla and Ronon before turning back to John "--just happen to look exactly like you and me. Completely indistinguishable from 'Earth human,' as you put it."

Behind Turing, Rodney opened his mouth. John caught his eye and gave a minute shake of his head; Rodney snapped his mouth shut, though with an impatient frown.

"The Ancients, who were also physiologically human, seeded the Pegasus Galaxy with human populations, which then each developed their own culture. I know it sounds like a fairy story, but everything McKay's told you is true."

"And yet these Pegasus aliens speak perfect English, albeit with North American accents." The derision was more overt now; calculatedly so, John judged.

Rodney couldn't contain himself any longer, snapping, "Yes, as I told you, an effect of the stargate. We aren't advanced enough to figure out yet how the Ancients managed that feat, but maybe, oh, someone with enough intellectual curiosity and ability could make a breakthrough in that field if he applied his mind to the problem and wasn't stubbornly set on killing himself instead!"

John winced and caught a pained look from Teyla, but Turing, surprisingly, laughed and turned a look that was almost indulgent on Rodney. Who huffed and folded his arms across his chest.

Turing turned back and dropped into a chair, the laughter falling away. He rested his elbows on the armrests and laced his fingers together, looking at them like a stern professor.

"You barge into my home and spin absurd tales, but you also know things about me you shouldn't have any knowledge of. The work on Enigma is classified at the highest level, and I very much doubt any of you are in those circles of British Intelligence."

He waited as each of them shook their heads, except Rodney, who pulled a face and rolled his eyes, then made a get-on-with-it gesture.

"You also have a piece of equipment that our level of knowledge at this time could not, in my estimation, devise." Turing looked at the scanner, sitting on the low table in the middle of their cluster of seats where he'd placed it after Rodney had brandished it triumphantly in his face.

Turing sobered further. "And you appear to know about my intimate plans for this day, which no one could possibly know. So, as fantastical as your tale of being from the future seems to be on the surface, it's also the only plausible explanation I can see."

Rodney dropped onto the window seat next to John. "Finally!"

"And you wish me to go to Pegasus with you, to disappear rather than--" He broke off, looking tired again.

"Yes." Rodney leaned forward and spoke with intensity. "We want you to have a chance at the life, the _full_ life, you haven't been allowed here."

"Though it's not all sweetness and light where we live."

Rodney frowned at him, and John said, "He needs to know all the truth, Rodney, before he makes up his mind. Don't keep sugarcoating it."

"I'm not--" Rodney looked mutinous, then resigned. "Fine. There are nasty space vampires where we live that feed on people's life forces. Teyla and Ronon's people, like most societies in Pegasus, have been decimated for centuries by these creatures called the Wraith."

Turing's eyebrows rose, but he didn't speak.

"We've made significant inroads into creating weapons to fight the Wraith, but we could do with some help there. Also, not every society on Earth in our time is entirely tolerant of homosexuality yet. But sodomy is no longer a crime in most of the Western world, and it's definitely not a crime on Atlantis."

"Except in the US military," John said quietly.

Rodney looked at him with a bittersweet smile. "Yes, except for American soldiers, who can be kicked out of the military if they reveal they sleep with men. But they won't be imprisoned and they sure as hell won't be subjected to drugs. In some countries, including England, men can openly marry men and women can marry women just like heterosexual couples. In Canada, homosexuals in the military can get married right on armed forces bases, via the base chaplain."

He looked earnestly at Turing, who was regarding him with an intent, unreadable face. "The world has changed for the better in a lot of ways, not just in the sciences. We still have a long way to go, but it's _better_. Better than anything you've known."

Silence fell, and even Rodney seemed to have run out of steam at last. After a few long moments, Turing stood up.

"I need to consider all you've told me, and your extraordinary proposal. I'll show you where the kitchen is if you'd like to get something to eat."

Turing disappeared upstairs, which made Rodney nervous, but he eventually settled with them at the table with canned soup they heated and cream crackers. They hadn't eaten since grabbing some cheap fish and chips in London while waiting for their connector train.

They each freshened up in the downstairs bathroom. As twilight drew in, Teyla put on the lights and they sat and looked at each other across the cleared table.

"We still have no idea how to get home," Rodney said wryly.

"Perhaps if Dr. Turing's situation is the reason we were diverted here, as you believe, our problem will be resolved when he has made his decision."

"Yeah. Maybe."

Rodney took the Ancient worry bead out of his pocket and set it on the table. John regarded the inert object, then poked it with irritation.

"You know, it's completely typical that you of all people, Rodney, with your big 'Do Not Touch' signs all over the city, would carry this thing around with you, even through the gate, like it was a fucking blanky."

Teyla looked amused and Ronon snorted as he stretched his arms above his head and leaned back in the chair to look up at the ceiling.

"Yes, yes, _mea culpa_. Whatever." Rodney waved a limp hand. "The problem is how to make it work again."

"You say these devices have a mental component." Turing strode into the room, which seemed to snap with sudden energy. "Have you tried recreating the exact conditions that brought you here?"

Turing looked fresh and alive, like he'd removed a veil to reveal living flesh. He'd changed into a black shirt with a lightweight, dark jacket that closed across his chest. He set a small bag down on the floor. John straightened in his chair and Ronon thumped his chair back down onto all four legs.

"Yes, of course I tried that! Do I look like an idiot? Sheppard tried it, too."

"We walked back and forth through the standing stones several times as Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard tried different combinations of thought and the movement of the switch, but nothing happened." Teyla spread her hands on the table and looked at Turing.

"These menhirs in Kent that showed no trace whatsoever of technology or an energy source."

"Yes, those stones, which we stepped out from between in the first place."

Turing managed to convey amusement and skepticism with the lift of a single eyebrow. Rodney bristled, but flushed.

"Okay, yes, they might just be rocks. A coincidence. They might not even be actual standing stones, for all I know. The point is, if they played no role, it doesn't matter that we were stepping through them. Trying different mental commands and moving the damned switch on the thing did _nothing_. Or we wouldn't still be here."

"Why don't you walk through the original event for us."

"Walk through--? We stepped into the wormhole on the Midway Station and emerged not through the gate at the SGC, but in a field in Kent. That's it! What else is there to say?"

"And while you were stepping into this wormhole, where was the--" Turing looked at the sphere with a tilted head "--object?"

"In my pocket. I told you that."

Turing lost neither his intentness nor his patience. "Were you touching it?"

"I-- Hmm. Yes, I think I had my hand in my pocket."

Rodney got up and took the sphere. He put it into his pocket and wiggled for a moment, apparently arranging his fingers.

"Oh, my god, how did I miss that! I wasn't just holding it; I was fiddling with it, which I've sort of got into the habit of doing. I was holding the switch in the middle, not at either end."

"And you were thinking about--me?"

"Well, maybe?" Rodney got a faraway look. "I was thinking about a project Radek and I have been working on for the last couple of years to do with unstable particles. Not a vital project, so we only work on it when we have a bit of spare time, but we'd been talking about it the day before the four of us left Atlantis. It involves the quantum Zeno effect, which used to be called the Turing paradox because it was based on one of your theories." He looked at Turing and spoke as though quoting. "Continual observations will prevent motion."

Turing raised his eyebrows, but nodded. "A simple theory."

"With some complex potentialities for quantum mechanics." Rodney pulled his hand from his pocket and looked at the device. "So, I was holding the sphere, with the switch held in the center, and thinking how useful it would be if we could talk directly to you, see what broader ideas you might've had for the theory as we've developed it in an intriguing direction. And I stepped into the wormhole."

"And the next thing we know, we're being hijacked to 1954 England. Good going, McKay."

"I said I was sorry! Look, all we can do is try doing this again, only in reverse." Rodney looked at Turing as he ended with a faint question in his voice.

Turing nodded, looking thoughtful. "The device might store sufficient energy to return you to your original destination once you've completed the diversion. Perhaps the device was fashioned to allow travel to places where a stargate didn't exist: A one-way trip with the means to return stored in a buffer. I suspect the object might be truly dead once it's completed its task."

"I don't know where it could draw the energy from."

"It might be a variant form of the buffer pattern you described as the means of travel through the stargate. Perhaps the device absorbs the energy it needs from the wormhole as you enter it with an alternate destination in mind and the switch in the activation position, and creates a pattern for the return at the same time. An ingenious, and highly complicated device, but if these Ancients were as technologically advanced as you've stated, perhaps it was within their capabilities."

Rodney shrugged. "It did something like that, so it seems obvious it was possible for them. So, shall we try it?"

"No, wait." Everyone turned to look at John. "I want to get home as much as you guys do, but we can't leave our clothes and other gear to be found. We have to make sure we don't leave any material trace of our having been in this time."

They slept the night at Turing's house; or, he, Teyla and Ronon slept. He was pretty sure Turing and Rodney didn't stop talking theories at each other for more than a few trips to the bathroom. They both looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning, though; Turing, in particular, looked like a different man, fully alive in his skin and with a spring in his step. He gave his house a somber look as he left it for the last time, but turned to join them with a resolute face. He'd left a note for his mother, he said, whose pain was his only regret.

They set out at dawn, using Turing's money for an easy, if boring, trip back to Kent. Retrieving their goods from the pawnshop, they found their gear safely hidden in the woods and changed. He and Teyla sneaked into the farmyard and left the borrowed clothes in a neat pile inside the first outbuilding.

The standing stones were as inert as ever to Rodney's scanner, but the five of them lined up, with Turing in the middle, and walked through as Rodney did his thing with his finger on the switch and mental command. To John's eternal surprise, he was suddenly stumbling on the metal platform of the SGC gate. He quickly checked the others were all there and turned back to see a line of soldiers pointing rifles as the wormhole winked out of existence behind them.

He put up his hands. "Whoa, it's all right. This man's with us."

Explanations were tedious and long-winded, and involved a lot of shouting from a red-faced, exhausted Rodney before many hours had passed. Alan Turing, in contrast, was a bastion of alert calm throughout, from the medical examinations to the grillings by General Landry, General O'Neill in from Homeworld Security, IOA members, a barrage of psychologists, and even a couple of social historians, who stared at Turing with such awe that Landry rolled his eyes and took their reports in record time before sending them on their way.

It was all eventually worth it, though, the days of meetings and reprimands and heated debates, with Atlantis joining the fray via wormhole communication, when they finally got the release to return to Atlantis and John saw Turing's face as he stepped into the city for the first time. He'd thought Turing had come fully alive when he'd left Hollymeade with a final resolute look, turning his face away from his past to adventure with them across the stars into the vast unknown on the wings of mathematics and science.

But he'd been wrong.

Behind Turing, Rodney's eyes glowed blue as the wormhole as he looked at John and mouthed, "We did it."

John smiled back.


End file.
